A Note in the Logbook

by Dan Kennedy

If I can recommend storytelling to you for any reason at all, it would be that storytelling helps you realize that the biggest, scariest, most painful or regretful things in your head get small and surmountable when you share them with two, or three, or twenty, or three thousand people. The other reason I can recommend storytelling is that we're all disappearing. You, me, everyone we know and love. A little heavy maybe, but when you tell stories, you do yourself a kind of favor by taking a moment to write your name in the wet cement of life before you head to whatever is next. This is a much more selfless act than conventional wisdom would have you believe. It's a little like leaving a note in the logbook on the trail that others will be hiking after you, a note that might give the next hiker a clue: "Keep your eyes open for rattlesnakes by the bluff at the two-mile mark" or "There's fresh water at the fire lookout if you're running low" or "I live in the woods now, and I don't care if I never see an iPhone again after staring at one for a decade until my head was tortured, my eyes were ruined, and my heart was broken."

6S

Dan Kennedy is an American author, stage performer, and host of The Moth storytelling podcast in New York. His (slightly edited) six sentences are excerpted from his Foreword to the book Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks.